Note to Newt: Many Food Stamp Families are Working

Len Burman
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Newt Gingrich has accused President Obama of being a "food stamp president." Yesterday he broadened the attack to include Mitt Romney, after the ex-governor said that he would fix the safety net if people were falling through the cracks. (Ironically, Romney's actual campaign proposals would shred the safety net.)

About Obama, Gingrich said, "He will always prefer a food stamp economy to a paycheck economy and call it fair." The implication is that people receiving food stamps aren't working. While it does appear to be true that most households receiving benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP is the new name for food stamps) are out of the work force, a significant fraction do have earnings and most of the rest are poor elderly or disabled households or single parents with children. Only one in six SNAP households in 2010 is a nonworking family without kids or an elderly or disabled family member. (See chart below, based on Table 3.3 of this report prepared for the USDA.)

The USDA also reports that 28 percent of adult participants in SNAP were employed. Another 24 percent were unemployed and looking for work. When the economy recovers, there will be many fewer unemployed people who need assistance. But a more fundamental problem is that so many people work in jobs that don't pay enough to support a family. The former Speaker's proposals amount to giant tax cuts for the wealthy and removal of regulations, which will surely help the rich do better, but there's no reason to think they will raise wages for low-skilled workers.

Over the long term, improving education is the most promising approach to raise wages, but the Gingrich campaign does not list education as a priority (in sharp contrast with Presidents Obama and Bush).

In the short term, keeping the minimum wage from declining in real terms would help. Mr. Romney has supported indexing the minimum wage. Mr. Gingrich opposes that.